’s EU sales were up 8% in February, not quite the dieselgate disaster that has been predicted, but reason for the Financial Times to lament that “Volkswagen has been left trailing its key rivals in Europe as it continues to feels the effect of the consumer backlash against the emissions scandal.” That backlash is far from proven.

A possible explanation for the slight lag is a newfound restraint of Volkswagen when it comes to selling cars at all cost. Now that the goal of becoming the world’s largest automaker has been postponed indefinitely, Volkswagen can turn to making money again, money it will need.

Registrations by OEMs & Dealers

Germany, February 2016

Renault

47.1%

Audi

42.3%

Opel

41.7%

Mercedes

40.1%

Peugeot

38.5%

Fiat

35.7%

Average

35.1%

BMW

34.8%

Hyundai

33.1%

Volkswagen

31.9%

Skoda

22.1%

Ford

19.7%

Source: Uni Duisburg

One indicator: Volkswagen is at the bottom of the scale of self-registrations, meaning a good deal of its reported sales was actually real. If you consult the list compiled by Germany’s CAR Institute at the Duisburg University, you will see that this is not always a matter of course. On average, 35.1% of all cars reported as sold in Germany in February were registered by their manufacturers or dealers. With some brands, it can be nearly half.

This practice has been going on for years in Europe. It only recently has drawn attention in America, where “automakers employ creative strategies to pump up performance,” as Automotive News writes:

“Among the most common appears to be a practice called "punching" -- dealers buying vehicles from their own inventory and converting them into testers or loaners in order to earn hefty bonuses. In some cases, the vehicles might simply languish on the lot, eventually showing up in the dealer's used-car inventory with virtually no miles on the odometer.”

If a large part of the sales stats is the work of creative accounting, reading anything meaningful into the numbers becomes increasingly moot. The German new car market for instance is “significantly weaker than the official statistics,” Professor Dudenhoefer of the Duisburg University said.